


Victory Tour

by eluna



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Book/Movie 2: Catching Fire, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, POV Katniss Everdeen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sharing a Bed, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Victory Tour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:48:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23853325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eluna/pseuds/eluna
Summary: And she knows this is her opportunity. This is the moment Katniss should admit that it wasn’t all fake—that some of it must have been real, because there were moments when she felt things for Peeta beyond just doing what was necessary to keep them both alive and in sponsors, when she wanted to do more, to explore, to—If she’s going to kiss him, she knows that she owes him that explanation. She knows she does. But, like a coward, she just says, “Is it okay if I do it again?”(Or: What really happened all those nights on the train during the Catching Fire Victory Tour.)
Relationships: Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark
Comments: 16
Kudos: 157
Collections: Crumbs





	Victory Tour

**Author's Note:**

> What it says on the tin. I’m sure this has been done a million times before, but I hope you enjoy my take on it. Kind of canon divergent since the book explicitly states that nothing more than cuddling happens on the tour, but the events here don’t change anything else about the course of canon.
> 
> This is a bit outside my usual genre, so I’m sorry if it sucks. Comments and kudos are love!

The first time it happens, in District 11, Katniss’s excuse is rock solid—she wakes up screaming, Peeta runs in to see what’s the matter, she asks him to stay, and he climbs into her bed until morning.

The night after, it’s not that simple.

It’s a quarter past two in the morning, but she’s still wide awake to hear the knock on her door, four slow and gentle raps on metal. “Come in,” she rasps, and the door slides sideways to reveal Peeta, who’s wearing a sheepish half-smile and standing there in his pajamas.

“Did I wake you?” he asks as he shuffles into the room. The door closes behind him, but he keeps standing there in front of the doorway, like he’s waiting for an invitation—hers.

Katniss shakes her head. “You, too, huh?” she says softly, and Peeta shrugs one shoulder.

“I fell asleep about an hour ago,” he explains, “but I—woke up.”

A nightmare, then. Peeta doesn’t usually wake up screaming the way Katniss does, but she still understands all too well the shaken, off-kilter feeling that lingers after the immediate terror of the arena fades into obscurity. “Well, come on up, then.”

He hurries forward, almost like he’s afraid she’ll retract the offer if he doesn’t climb onto the mattress fast enough, but hesitates at the foot of her bed. “I have to take my prosthetic off,” Peeta says, almost apologetically. “I wore it to bed last night, and it made me stiff all day today.”

Katniss flushes. She’s half embarrassed—she knows Peeta hates making himself vulnerable by taking his leg off—and half annoyed that he, what? Thought last night that she couldn’t handle the sight of the gap where his calf used to be? After everything they both saw six months ago in the Games?

“I’m sorry. You should have told me last night,” says Katniss finally. Peeta’s out of the leg by now, hobbles up to the side of the bed next to her and propels himself up into the bed.

It’s not a very wide mattress, but Katniss still manages to press herself up against the wall without touching Peeta’s body. It’s got nothing to do with his missing leg—she just doesn’t feel justified snuggling up to him without having been awoken from a nightmare, like she had been when they did this last night. Even knowing that Peeta is in the exact same situation she was last time, the knowledge that what _Katniss_ would be getting out of it would be more than nightmare-comfort makes her feel—ashamed, maybe, of how much she wants to hold him.

So she doesn’t. Peeta doesn’t push it, just holds himself as close to the edge of the bed as he can and quickly falls into a shallow sleep—Katniss can tell by the quality of his breaths, just barely deeper and slower than before.

She lies awake for another hour, then two, watching the slow heave up and down of Peeta’s chest and listening to his gradually deepening breathing, admitting to herself that, yes, she allowed this without needing it. Finally, when the clock across the room reads half past four, Katniss feels her eyes slipping closed.

When she wakes a few short hours later, Peeta is, inexplicably, tangled up inside her arms. She tries to retract her grasp, but the motion wakes him, too, and he gives her a bleary-eyed and curious look as she extracts herself hastily from the bed.

“Sorry—I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.”

He does, apparently without a second thought, and Katniss envies him that.

The next night, the knock at Katniss’s door comes at just shy of eleven o’clock at night—far too early for Peeta to have already fallen asleep and subsequently woken from a nightmare. “Hey,” she calls out, her voice shaking a little, and he enters.

“Hey. Do you mind?—uh…”

“Um, no, not at all,” says Katniss clumsily, and Peeta swings himself up onto the mattress this time before he detaches the prosthetic from his left leg and sets it carefully at the foot of the bed.

Again, they don’t touch each other, but this time, it’s too early for Peeta to fall straight asleep. He closes his eyes, and she closes hers, but lies awake listening to his breathing for a long, long time.

For reasons that she doesn’t fully understand, Katniss is aching to reach out and hold him, but she resists the temptation, keeping pressed up against the wall as far away as she can. She passes the time analyzing her motives so that she doesn’t have to think about his. Katniss doesn’t know if she’ll ever understand _why_ Peeta Mellark claims to love her, why she ought to believe him.

The next time she opens her eyes, an excruciating half an hour later, Peeta is looking straight at her with tired eyes. Katniss can feel her heartbeat rabbiting, her breaths quickening, but she doesn’t shut her eyes or turn away. She adds that to the list of things she’s done around Peeta that she doesn’t understand.

“Hey,” Peeta says again, and then he adds, “It’s okay.”

Her whole body tenses up, but he doesn’t try to touch her, and she doesn’t know whether she’s happy or not about it. She swears her muscles are all still taut when she finally falls asleep.

She dreams of—well, she’d rather not dwell on what she dreams of, to be honest. The Games get enough screen time in her sleep. When she wakes up an hour later, she’s whimpering, and Peeta is shushing her gently and rocking her from side to side; she is tangled up in his arms and the stump of his leg is swung on top of her thigh.

The room is pitch-black, but as her eyes adjust, she grows able to see the look of concern smeared like paint across Peeta’s face. “You’re okay. It’s not real. It’s not real,” he tells her shakily.

She’s stiff as a board inside of Peeta’s arms, but the fear is real and his comfort is allowed, now, so Katniss winds her arms around his midriff and stuffs her face in the crook of his neck. “Thank you,” she whispers, and he tightens his grip around her, lulling her from side to side.

When Peeta climbs up into bed the next night, he immediately, if tentatively, opens his arms, and Katniss hesitates for a few long moments before allowing herself to fall into them. When she does, he feels warm and solid, compressing her enough that she feels protected without feeling stifled. She settles her head against his chest and tries to sleep.

Only she can’t, and not just because her head is full of worry about uprisings and rebellion and the hateful looks in the eyes of the people of District 8 as Peeta read from Effie’s cards. Peeta’s heartbeat under her ear is _so steady_ , so unlike her own, and she doesn’t understand how he’s always so unfazed when Katniss…

…is reminded, suddenly, of the few times in the arena when she kissed Peeta and felt something stirring inside herself, something curious, something interested. She feels something drop in her stomach, and she can’t tell whether she’s hungry for something or whether she’s sickened with herself.

More nightmares come in Districts 7, 6, 5. Katniss tells herself that falling asleep wound together is helping, that that’s why she’s allowing it to happen, but she’s finding it harder and harder to ignore her quickening pulse every night, to relax enough to fall asleep.

She’s not sure if she minds that last part. Katniss doesn’t know whether it’s worse to relive the Games or to have to live with herself when she thinks about—about taking advantage of Peeta, in this way.

It’s midnight, the night after their visit to District 4, and Katniss is thoroughly tangled up in Peeta’s body when she feels his breath catch and sees his eyes flicker open, darting frantically around the room. He’s clearly just awoken from an arena dream, is struggling to regain his grip on reality, and she clutches his cheeks in her hands and says, “Stop. You’re all right. It’s okay.”

“Katniss?”

“Yes.”

“You’re alive?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Peeta is hyperventilating now, his sleep-rough voice catching, and Katniss forcibly tilts his head until she’s able to make and hold eye contact. “We’re okay, Peeta. I’m right here.”

“Katniss?”

It’s unnerving, seeing Peeta come out of a nightmare—usually she sleeps right through them—and Katniss tells herself that concern for him is the reason that she strokes a thumb across one of his cheeks, lets out a shaky breath, and stretches to press her lips against Peeta’s.

He doesn’t react, and she holds herself there without moving for a few moments before pulling away, tipping her forehead against his. From too much up close, she can see that Peeta’s eyes have widened, but his gaze is fixed on Katniss now, no longer jumping fearfully around the room.

“What was that for?” asks Peeta, and his voice is shaking hard.

“I… I wanted to,” Katniss admits, blushing.

“You did?”

And she knows this is her opportunity. This is the moment Katniss should admit that it wasn’t all fake—that some of it must have been real, because there were moments when she felt things for Peeta beyond just doing what was necessary to keep them both alive and in sponsors, when she wanted to do more, to explore, to—

If she’s going to kiss him, she knows that she owes him that explanation. She knows she does. But, like a coward, she just says, “Is it okay if I do it again?”

Peeta is clearly wide awake now. He doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t pull away from her, either. “Gale—”

“—isn’t here,” she says, and it comes out more harshly than she means it. “Sorry. I just mean…”

“Yeah,” says Peeta. “Yeah, okay.”

Katniss tilts down again until their lips are brushing. For a second or two, both of them are frozen in place, and then she feels Peeta ever-so-gently close both his lips around Katniss’s bottom one, pull away by a fraction, and then open back up and settle back against her mouth.

She’s not sure what to do at first, but what Peeta is doing feels good, so she tries to imitate him, closing her mouth around his upper lip again and again in sync with his own movements. She thinks about how this is _Peeta_ , the boy with the bread who’s saved her life several times over, now—who loves her even, and especially, when she doesn’t deserve it—and she _hates_ herself, and her stomach is stirring.

They’re lying facing each other on their sides, Katniss on her right and Peeta on what remains of his left. Her hands are still cupping his cheeks, and she slides one of them up into his hair, gripping it softly. Peeta _groans_ and reaches up, his once-limp hands reaching around her neck, into her hair, tugging pieces of it loose from her braid.

Her right leg slips in between both of Peeta’s, and her mind is everywhere—lost in Peeta’s hands and mouth and the knowledge that she shouldn’t be enjoying this, not when Gale and his family and her own family could all be dead in a matter of days if Snow doesn’t get what he wants. Is it still wrong, she wonders, if being in love with Peeta is giving Snow what he wants? Kissing Peeta doesn’t mean she’s in love with him, but certainly it’ll help make the act more authentic.

Again, Katniss feels disgusted with herself. The whole point of this was supposed to be to figure out the feelings she’d experienced for Peeta in the arena, away from the cameras, somewhere that she could parse what had been real from what hadn’t been, and here she’s telling herself it’s still part of the act to justify her guilt.

Peeta seems to sense that something’s wrong because he pulls back gently, pecking her on the cheek as he does. Neither of them says anything for a long time.

“Sorry,” says Katniss eventually, because she can’t think of anything else to say, and if something doesn’t break the silence she’s going to implode.

“For what?”

“I shouldn’t be… I shouldn’t kiss you when I don’t know… not like you care about me.”

Sighing, Peeta extricates his hands from her hair and settles them comfortingly around her waist. “Just try to sleep,” he says. “It’ll be easier in the morning.”

It’s not—easier, that is—but Peeta acts like everything is normal, so Katniss does, too. In the town square of District 3, she holds Peeta’s hand and tries to look at him with adoration, tries to remember the feeling in her belly last night as she kissed him, but connecting the two things just makes her feel sick.

She’s half expecting Peeta not to come that night, but he knocks on her door right on time at eleven, climbs into bed and wraps his left arm around her like he hasn’t got an expectation in the world. Katniss lies there stiffly until Peeta innocently asks, “Something wrong?”

“No,” she says, and Peeta chuckles to himself, obviously unconvinced.

He sobers, then, and says, “You know we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, right?”

“Yeah, I know,” Katniss sighs, unable to find the words to tell him that feeling pressured isn’t really the problem.

Their Districts 2 and 1 appearances are by far the most worrisome yet of the tour. Katniss is so afraid for her family’s and friends’ safety that the nightmares get worse, even while she’s lying in Peeta’s arms. She supposes that Peeta shouldn’t be surprised when she suggests a marriage proposal by the time they reach the Capitol, but she supposes, too, that she owes him space to deal after they agree to do it. After all, like Haymitch says, Peeta may have wanted this, but he never wanted it to happen _like this_.

She doesn’t remember Peeta coming into her room that night—Katniss fell asleep almost immediately after the train departed from the Capitol—just wakes up lying on his arm the next day and feeling… safe, sort of. Safer than she should, at least. She’s looking forward to the tour being over but not to going back to sleeping without Peeta. Still, the train ride from the Capitol back to District 12 is several days long, and she finds herself forcing herself awake as long as she can the next night while Peeta dozes in her arms, trying to memorize the feel of his body against hers.

The night before the train is scheduled to arrive in District 12, she loses the battle against sleep around three in the morning and screams herself awake hardly an hour later. The first thing she’s consciously aware of is Peeta holding her and shushing her gently. The second thing she notices is how _exhausted_ she feels—of the Games’ refusal to end, of worrying for her loved ones’ safety, of her own warring emotions about Peeta and Gale.

“It’s okay,” Peeta tells her for the umpteenth time. “I’ve got you.”

And she can’t quite figure out why, but something inside of her snaps and she finds herself craning her neck up until their lips connect, moving faster this time than they did before District 3; Peeta pulls back and starts to ask something, Katniss doesn’t know what, but she just tells him, “Don’t,” and leans back in. After some hesitation, Peeta sighs and starts to kiss back.

The funny feeling in her stomach is back, and she rolls on top of him, incredibly conscious of the fact that this is her first time kissing Peeta as his fiancée instead of as his fake girlfriend. Does it still count as a fake relationship when they’re really going to get married, even if they’re not in love? _Are_ they not in love? Does any of it matter?

Peeta’s hands are hopelessly tangled in her hair again, and she wedges her legs around his right one, clinging tight with her thighs to the muscles there. Abruptly, Katniss can feel something pulsing in between her legs—something frightening and familiar, somewhat, something she’s sensed before upon waking in the night from more pleasant dreams, but nothing she’s ever acted on, or even really understands _how_ to act on. District 12 may not have any kind of—education, or outreach, or anything—about it, but she knows enough to realize that this throbbing has something to do with what married people do to each other in bed. Tentatively, she presses up against Peeta’s leg and drags her hips downward, but just as soon as she does, Peeta’s hands fly to her hips and lift her a few long inches away from his body.

“Not like this,” he tells her, breaking the kiss.

“Like what?”

“Like an experiment,” he says now, and his voice sounds in pain, and instantly the guilt comes rushing back.

He kisses her on the forehead, rolls Katniss gently off to his side, and then rolls over himself so that he’s facing away from the wall—away from her. It’s the last time he’ll kiss her until they’re back, six months later, in the arena—not that they know that now.

(When she gets home, she finds that she misses having Peeta Mellark in her bed more than anything and finds, equally, that she’s more confused than ever about what he means to her. She lies awake remembering the feeling of his lips closing around her lips, his thigh pressed up between her own, and doesn’t sleep for a long, long time.)


End file.
